Poor Viewing Angle

Right Side Ports

Left Side Ports

On the left are ports for VGA and USB as well as an SD card and the fan.

HP Touchsmart 11 vs. Pavilion 15t

The TouchSmart 11, compared to HPs larger Pavilion 15t. The smaller laptop is almost as powerful and $200 less... and it won't break your back.

With the school season afloat and far too many enjoying the blessings of financial aid, living at home or starting their own ramen-only records, buying a computer isn't exactly at the top of the priority list for incoming students. The MacBook Air isn’t cheap, and neither is being the cool kid on campus. Not everyone can afford a laptop starting at $1,000.

That's the starting price of the brand-new HP Pavilion Touchsmart 11, which touts a touchscreen, AMD's latest low-power processor and the promise of a seven-hour battery life. For less than the cost of a new iPad, the full-fledged computer sounds like a dream come true. But we all know the too-good-to-be-true scenario, and this is partly the case with the incredibly inexpensive PC.

Less Power, Mo' Problems

For the low cost, you might expect the Pavilion Touchsmart to come with 10-year-old parts. Surprisingly, most of the Touchsmart 11 is fresh, including an all-new AMD A4 processor. As tested, the Touchsmart includes an almost sadly slow 1GHz dual-core processor, a Radeon 8180 graphics chip, 4GB of DDR3 RAM and a 320GB hard disk drive (tested model courtesy of HP).

This laptop can be customized to a more respectable 1.4GHz A6 processor (a quad-core chip with an improved graphics processor), 8GB of RAM and a 500GB HDD ($530). As functional as it is, the extreme measures taken to keep the cost down are painful to live with, at least on the tested model.

Launch a new application and take a coffee break. Open a new browser tab on a heavy webpage and get a refill. The Touchsmart 11 isn’t slow, not exactly; for individual tasks, like writing documents and spreadsheets, browsing the web and watching HD video (read: 720p), this almost-netbook suffices just fine. Pop another task into its to-do list and grab a candy bar. Windows 8 is built for multitasking, but the Touchsmart can't really do multiple things at once. Just think of this laptop is as a high-functioning tablet — with a keyboard attached.

As bad as that may sound, it's very usable. Once the Touchsmart is running whatever application was on its plate, it can start with the next one. Like the little engine that could, respecting the Pavilion's capabilities will leave you more than satisfied with the performance. If you want it to "just work" for everything you throw at it, you’ll have to cough up a bit more cash.

While testing the HP, Samsung sent our next review laptop with very similar specs, plus their own 1.4GHz quad-core chip, and it doesn’t have the same performance difficulty. Sure, Samsung’s machine has a custom chip, but it’s a safe bet that throwing down another $50 for a faster CPU would alleviate most of the Touchsmart’s performance anxiety.

All-Day Computing

A low-performance processor may sound like a death sentence, but like low-powered Ultrabooks and the long-dead netbooks, low power means great battery life. The Touchsmart 11 lasts over seven hours of use. I clocked it in at 7:13, which is about the same length of time as the latest Intel i5/i7-based laptops (which are at least double the price). Plus that's on Wi-Fi — web browsing and typing away the whole while. Charge time, from a fully-drained battery to 100%, takes two-and-a-half hours.

Physical typing on the Touchsmart for the whole day is easy. The flat, low-profile keys are well spaced and comfortable to type on, even on the small frame. The tiny touchpad is small, but supplemented by the 11.6-inch 1,366 x 768 resolution touchscreen. In other words, the touchpad is good enough, but the touchscreen isn’t. It's painfully obvious that the panel doesn't have an oleophobic coating like today's smartphones and tablets, which makes dragging a finger across the screen the worst kind of fight with friction.

The Touchsmart's display is fairly good considering the price. It's an anti-glare LED-backlit panel that is bright enough to use outdoors, but barely so when it's very bright or if there's a lot of residual glare. Viewing angles are mediocre at best; don't expect to watch a movie with your significant other on this machine unless you're attached at the neck. Color accuracy and video reproduction is decent enough for school projects but not much else.

Everything You Need, But Still for a Price

When it comes to low-cost computing, little can compete with the HP Pavilion Touchsmart 11. For $400, who can complain, right? Wrong.

The processor is too slow, and I expected a $50 upgrade to be such an improvement that it could make all the difference. Samsung's own CPU is custom-made, but jumping from a dual-core 1GHz A4 to the quad-core 1.4GHz A6 should have a massive performance boost for daily use.

At $450, or even $500 with 8GB of RAM, the Touchsmart 11 sounds like a steal. After all, for the same price, you can buy a brand new iPad — or 560 college-grade meals. Combine a great keyboard, decent touchscreen display for personal use, plenty of ports (two USB 3.0, one USB 2.0, Ethernet, VGA, HDMI, SD card slot, microphone) and seven hours of battery life, and you’ve got a hard bargain to beat.

It's not without compromises: The touchscreen isn't slick, viewing angles leave much to be desired and processing power is limited to say the least. If you're in the market for a low-cost, long-lasting computer and you're not willing to settle down with a tablet of some sort, the Touchsmart 11 is a very reasonable buy. Just splurge for the better processor.

The Lowdown

What’s Good

Surprisingly decent build for such an inexpensive machine

Long seven-hour battery life

Starts at $400

What’s Bad

Pay more for the faster CPU because the base model is slow

Screen is rough to touch and has bad viewing angles

For the same price, a one- or two-year-old laptop has way more power (but not the battery life)

Bottom Line: The HP TouchSmart 11 isn't the best multitasker, but this low-cost laptop has a great keyboard and respectable battery life — and can get the job done.

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